You don't have to be a business school graduate to see that the computer game market is just as trendy as any other industry. What's all the rage today will have to fight for space on the dusty budget rack by this time next year. The cycle goes something like this: a good idea comes about and a few people get wind of it; some more people find out about this New Thing and start whining, saying things like, "This New Thing is really cool and everything else sucks! Why can't we play more games like this New Thing?"; game companies become alarmed, drop all their pending projects and start churning out New Clones, all for the sake of giving the public what it really wants. The game companies ram the New Clones down people's throats; the consumers all O.D.; end of story. (Kind of like when punk rock came to New York City, now that I think of it.) New Thing has become Old Dead Goo, and nobody wants to play anymore, since none of the New Clones are any good anyway.

	That's the cycle. Cynical? Who, me?

	With that uplifting bit of reasoning firmly implanted in the forefront of my mind I settled down to play CyClones, a new Doom clone from SSI. As you can well imagine, I was not expecting a game of particularly high quality. Actually, I was already pigeon-holing it as Operation Body Count with a budget. I had good reason to suspect great badness: the pre-release graphics I'd seen hadn't thrilled me, SSI is not known for action games, and the exponential decay rate of the quality of Doom clones indicated that CyClones would – should – fall flat on its face.

	Yeah. Okay. So I was wrong. What, I can't be wrong sometimes? Am I infallible? Am I omnipotent? No, just opinionated, and occasionally incorrect. But at least I admit it.

	Since CyClones is a Doom clone, many people will assume that there's not much of a story behind it. Good guess, folks. In the (near?) future, earth is attacked by some evil alien race (because that's what they're there for). Our only hope is to bond a cybernetic armor suit to a willing human soldier in an attempt to create a super warrior capable of pushing the Huns – er, Alien Goobers – back to their own corner of the galaxy. Since the game would be really boring if someone else got the job, YOU are that idealistic young jarhead. I hope you ate your Wheaties, 'cause it's gonna be a long fraggin' day! To sum up: you're this guy, and there's other guys, so kill 'em.

	CyClones starts off with a little animated intro (suprised?) that's pretty nondescript – nice but nothing awe-inspiring. If you have the CD-ROM version you also get a little bit of video before each mission. If you think that's a good reason to be the CD version over the floppy, prepare to stand corrected. The video is, well, pretty bad. The actors are certainly no threat to Samuel L. Jackson's career. SSI admits that there may be sound synchronization problems if you're playing on a 486, but even on my Pentium the sound got out of whack. To be fair, this could be due to my NEC 3X Multispin CD drive, which I think is actually licensed from Ronco. The video sequences have the look and feel of an afterthought, but at least the CD version alleviates the strain on your hard drive.

	Okay, that's the end of my complaints. (Well, actually I have one left, but I'll save it for a little while.) Once you get past the campy (there's a polite word!) video, there's a damn good game to be had. The movement is very smooth and quick, as is the character animation. CyClones has the feel of a good first person game, rather than the plodding thrown-together sensation you get from, shall we say, the low-profile Doom wannabes.

	The main way CyClones differs from Doom is the use of the mouse as an aiming device. You still walk around and sidestep with the keyboard, but instead of having a gun barrel jutting staticly from your chest, you have a crosshairs you position and fire with your mouse. This eliminates the error that crops up occasionally in Doom when you're aiming at one thing and the computer thinks you're aiming at something else, and also gives CyClones a unique feel. Additionally, the crosshairs is color-coded. It glows orange when positioned on an enemy thing that may want to cause you bodily harm, blue when it's on an object you can pick up, and purple when touching a door you could open (very handy for locating secret doors). Raven Software deserves some praise for implementing such a smart feature where no one else has.

	Another thing I liked about CyClones is that each mission has a specific objective. It's not just another game where you kill everything, find the exit, and go on to the next level. You'll rescue hostages, activate captured alien ships, and perform other tasks that give the game some variety and help distinguish one mission from another. The missions also progress logically; finding an encryption key in one mission will allow you to open a mission-critical door in the next.

	I really only have one gripe about the gameplay, and it's a fairly minor one that's just annoying rather than debilitating. I don't like the automap one bit. Instead of the Doom-like overhead map (ugly but informative), CyClones presents its automap in an isometric 3D view. While great in theory, it doesn't work out very well. It's hard to tell where your man is (I often have to turn the walls off just to see where I am), and you can't move around while in the automap. Scrolling is also clumsy. Instead of holding down an arrow key, you must click once, which moves the map a little bit, and then click again. If you've ever scrolled down through a long list of files on CompuServe, you know the feeling. Click. Wait. Click. Wait. It's irritating. A simple map that didn't look as good but had more functionality would have been appreciated.

	Cheesy video and clumsy automap aside, CyClones is a real winner. It retains Doom's feel while offering a slightly different slant on the first-person shooter. The graphics and sounds are good, and the control is excellent. CyClones is fast, tense, and challenging. In short, a fine choice for Doom junkies the world over.